Sarkozy’s Spends $16,000 A Day On Food, Total Annual Expenditure: $150 Million

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been accused of spending more than $150 million dollars every year on his presidential expenditure account, reported the Daily Mail on Monday, despite recent pledges by the statesman to cut down on spending in the lead-up to the presidential elections later this year.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been accused of spending more than $150 million dollars every year on his presidential expenditure account, reported the Daily Mail on Monday, despite recent pledges by the statesman to cut down on spending in the lead-up to the presidential elections later this year.

A new book released by Socialist Member of Parliament (MP) Rene Dosiere details Sarkozy’s extravagant lifestyle, including: almost $16,000 a day on food, $160,000 a year to insure a fleet of 121 cars, $435,000 for fuel; and another $300,000 on flowers.

The French president also flew a medical team on a state-owned jet to Ukraine last week, in order to give his son Pierre a health check-up and fly him back to Paris.

Sarkozy is “ignoring the most elementary principles of the separation between private and public accounts,” said Dosiere, who criticised the extravagant lifestyle that both Sarkozy and his former supermodel wife Carla Bruni chose to live.

The French president’s penchant for flying also came under heavy criticism, with the president taking planes for nearly every journey, including a short 80-mile trip from Paris to Saint-Quentin, and another to the Lascaux caves with his wife, which cost the taxpayer nearly  $726,000 in total.

[quote]Even “Queen Elizabeth II travels by train sometimes but Mr Sarkozy never takes the train,” said Dosiere. “He always flies…I think our republic is more of a monarchy than Great Britain.”[/quote]

Although Sarkozy recently cancelled a $790,000 annual palace garden party in order to appease the French people, the incumbent president is still trailing his socialist opposition candidate, Francois Hollande, in opinion polls before this spring’s presidential election.

The cost for the private jet that flew to Ukraine for his son is also reported to have cost taxpayers more than $34,000; with the president only reimbursing $10,000 back to the presidential expense account thus far.

[quote]”If this had happened to me or you, we would not have been brought home in a private plane. True, he’s the President’s son but the very least you can expect is that the total cost of the trip should be reimbursed,” said Dosiere during an interview with The Times.[/quote]

Dosiere also asserts in his book that the annual presidential budget has since risen by 5.8 percent from 2008 to 2010, with Sarkozy in office.

‘The figures make you giddy,’ said Dosiere, who had previously accused the president of lavish spending back in 2009, when Sarkozy gave himself a 140 percent pay rise.